“Pecunia non olet”
“Money has no smell”
A Latin phrase that has crossed centuries and entered our daily conversations. We all know its meaning: money has no smell. To Roman ears, the expression must have sounded even more poignant: the word pecunia actually comes from pecus, meaning “herd” or “livestock,” referencing an economy still rooted in barter where farm animals represented wealth meant for trade. But where did this phrase originate, and, above all, how should it be understood?
The Latin idiom comes from Suetonius—and was later picked up by Cassius Dio (Hist. LXV, 14), a biographer and intellectual at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. It is taken from one of the imperial biographies collected under the title De vita Caesarum, “The Lives of the Twelve Caesars” (VIII, 23). The biography containing the phrase “pecunia non olet” is the Life of the Deified Vespasian, the emperor who ruled Rome from 69 to 79 AD. He was the first of the Flavian dynasty, known to history for initiating the construction of the Colosseum and for his victory over the Jews in 70 AD, but best known to most for introducing a tax on the collection of urine from public latrines—used by dyers for its ammonia content—which led to public toilets in Italy being named vespasiani.
Here is the passage featuring the expression:
“When his son Titus criticized him for devising even a tax on urine, Vespasian held to his nose the money derived from the first payment, asking him if he was offended by the smell; and when Titus replied that he was not, Vespasian said: ‘And yet, it comes from urine.'”— Suetonius, Life of the Deified Vespasian, 23
The phrase has thus become proverbial, meaning that one should not be overly scrupulous about the source of money.
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